DISTRICT TECHNOLOGY TRAINING

August 23, 2013


Socrative - http://www.socrative.com/


  • Teachers and students can use Socrative on any device with a web browser (tablets, smartphones, laptops, iPod Touches, etc.).
  • Teachers login at t.socrative.com by entering their email and password (or by launching their app)
  • Students login at m.socrative.com (or by launching their app) by entering the "virtual room number" provided by the teacher. Students will then see "Waiting for teacher to start an activity...". Room Number: 948097
  • Teachers initiate an activity by selecting it on their main screen (e.g. Multiple Choice, T/F, Quick Quiz).
  • Students respond on their devices.
  • Students' results are visible on the Teacher's screen or sent in an email.
  • You can find great classroom ideas, user guides, videos, and more in the Socrative Garden.
    • Note: Students do not register for accounts. They simply enter your unique classroom number to answer questions.
    • Free Additional Functionality - Add images and graded short answer questions to your quiz by filling out your teacher profile.

LearnZillion - www.learnzillion.com - MATH, ELA, READING & WRITING IN SCI & TECHNICAL SUBJECTS

  • FREE! Aligned to the Common Core - click on the Common Core Navigator - domains, clusters, and standards
  • LearnZillion can:
    • help you gain a better understanding of the CC standards (over 2000 lessons)
    • help with standards-aligned lesson planning
    • assist with assigning lessons, providing practice, and assessing students; great for differentiation
    • connect home and school
  • Ideas for Lesson Plans and PPT resources
  • Create your class(es)
  • Assign Lessons and/or Play Lists/Quizzes Based on Content To Be Covered or Content Covered
  • Ability to assign content to one or more than one student in the class - great for differentiation
  • General LearnZillion Resources - parent letter & notes template

TED-ed - Lessons Worth Sharing -http://ed.ted.com/ - ALL CONTENT AREAS

  • Create a FREE account
  • Search for High Quality Videos in All Content Areas - Create Your Lesson - Watch, Think, Dig Deeper, and/or Discuss
  • Filter by content/best flips
  • Customize your lesson by editing or excluding any section.
  • You can title your lesson, provide context for the video, add or remove questions, and end the lesson with additional resources.
  • Click on your name at the top to see the "You Page" - shows lessons started and created
  • Share this lesson - email the link or post to your teacher webpage

CK-12 – FLEX BOOKS – http://www.ck12.org/student/ - STEM

  • Create FREE customizeabile, standards- aligned digital content.
  • CK-12 Foundation, a non-profit organization that creates and aggregates high quality, curated STEM content. The CK-12 library includes over 5,000 math and science concepts and FlexBooks with multiple modalities for all learning types including: videos, images, reading, simulations, real world applications, activities, flashcards, study guides, assesments and more!
  • Content is divided into concepts and books. Concepts are great for learning or reviewing specific topics. Books provide in-depth details about a subject.
  • Concepts and books can be edited to best match a teacher or learners needs.
Customizing a Flex Book
1. Sign into your CK-12 account
2. Choose a subject
3. Choose a FlexBook
4. Click “make a copy”
5. Use the toolbar to add videos, images and edit text style
6. Drag chapters to the order you want them in
7. Customize the title
8. Click on the “details” page to enter a description and your name as an author
9. Click “save changes”


INeedAPencil - FREE, online SAT PREP resource - http://ineedapencil.ck12.org/


BrainGenie - FREE - http://braingenie.ck12.org/ - MATH & SCIENCE

Braingenie builds deep mastery and sharpens problem-solving skills.
  • Learn, practice, and quiz yourself on 5,000+ skills.
  • Compete in real-time multiplayer matches.
  • Win badges and go for a top spot on the leaderboard.

Discovery Education Streaming Plus- Discovery Ed

  • Model Lessons for Common Core instructional strategies that support literacy, higher order thinking skills and enhanced problem solving for students

PBS Learning Media- PBS Learning Media


Read, Write, Think - www.readwritethink.org


Project Gutenberg - Free ebooks! - www.gutenberg.org

Get complete works of popular authors
  • Project Gutenberg does a fantastic job in putting together the works of popular authors. So, instead of several books (files) by Mark Twain, you can download all his titles published earlier on PG – in one file. You can find complete works of not only Mark Twain, but also William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, or Winston Churchill. What’s very important, if any of the collections is being updated, you can get an update via RSS, if you subscribe to it. The best way to browse PG for these books is to type in a search box a keyword “complete” or “complete works“.
  • Search for vintage images
    • Images from old books. Do you know that you can search them very easily using Google? It took me half an hour to find these wonderful vintage illustrations of people reading, including rare images of Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln.
      The site which is best suited for Google image search is Project Gutenberg, no doubt about it. As I mentioned above, all books are offered in html format – and that means their content can be accessed by Google web crawlers.
      To find images on Project Gutenberg:
      1. In a Google web search type the command that limits search to one site only. For Project Gutenberg this is:
      site:gutenberg.org
      You can follow it with a keyword or key phrase you are looking for:
      site:gutenberg.org library
      2. Then, click on an Images search tab:
      Finding images in public domain ebooks
      Finding images in public domain ebooks

      The results are astonishing. You won’t see here scanned book pages, like on other sites. You’ll see only images that were included in the original books as illustrations or photos.
      Below there is a screenshot with images returned for a “library” query:
      Project Gutenberg - images from public domain ebooks
      Project Gutenberg - images from public domain ebooks
  • Send ebooks in one click to Dropbox and Google Drive
    At the end of 2012 the site added a very useful Dropbox integration. Google Drive joined in March 2013. What these integrations mean? You can send ebooks to any of the services in just one click. This is a huge time-saver. You can send the book to your favorite cloud storage service without downloading it to disc, and then upload it to the cloud.
    Project Gutenberg - one-click send to Dropbox and Google Drive
    Project Gutenberg - one-click send to Dropbox and Google Drive

    When using Dropbox for a first time, click on a button and Dropbox will ask you to authorize Gutenberg app. Click Allow and the app will create a new folder, named gutenberg, where all the files will be sent and stored.
    With Google Drive, you will be asked to grant access to your Google account. After that, sending files to Drive is a matter of one click. Unlike Dropbox (where books land in a special folder), files will appear in a main Drive catalog. You may want to move them to a special folder created especially for ebooks.


Edmodo is designed to get students excited about learning in a familiar environment. On Edmodo, teachers can continue classroom discussions online, give polls to check for student understanding, and award badges to individual students based on performance or behavior.